Delta County was established in 1843 and attached to Mackinac County for judicial purposes. The county would develop slowly and its initial progress hinged on harvesting the area's vast timber resources. Louis Roberts is credited with being the first permanent settler in the county, arriving at Flat Rock in 1838 to take over a small mill begun a few years earlier by a man named Chandler. Settlement elsewhere in the county occurred gradually. A steam mill built in 1850 at the mouth of the Whitefish River was the catalyst for establishing the village of Masonville, the first real settlement in the county. The village became the nominal county seat of Delta County until 1861 when the boundaries of Delta County, then attached to Mackinac County, were redefined and the seat moved to Escanaba. [1]